back to the bottom

As I insinuated, the six-hour drive to the Sand Dunes last weekend was fairly uneventful. Our day was exhilarating, tiring, awesome, but uneventful. For me anyhow. One of the other drivers had his own little adventure. From the driver’s seat of Van 1, I merely laughed and murmured to Jonathan-riding-shotgun, “Oh good. now I’m not the driver at the bottom of the totem pole anymore!”

We decided to keep this last weekend low key. So yesterday we loaded up into a couple of vans and went on a gentle hike - just over a mile - to Opal Lake. After 30 minutes of wash-board gravel roads, we piled out at the trail head.

“You want to lead?” Eric looked at me.

“I wasn’t here when we went last year. I was sick. …but I guess can anyway. Is the trail well marked?”

He nodded. And assigned Shelly (the cook) to the front with me.

“I’ve never been here before,” she echoed. But she was game. And we struck out. How hard is it to follow a trail?

And what a fabulous mountain side! The aspens grew so straight and white and close together. And I don’t often see grass growing in a forest. But in between the trees, it was green. A very different kind of lushness than in Oregon. It had rained the day before, so the mud was slick and slurpy and beautiful. We wandered through meadows, stopped to climb up fallen trees, laughed and slid up and down the trail. For about an hour. Until Mae finally piped up “How long is it to the lake?” Shelly and I looked at each other and shrugged. There had been only one real fork in the road. The trail sign had fallen down. But we’d followed the arrow pointing to “Opal lake”. A group of us had gotten pretty far ahead. Why turn back now? So we plodded on. Finally a ridge grew up in front of us. We could see the trees ended.

“I don’t want to get anyone’s hope up, but that’s probably it.” Rob remarked quietly. Expectantly we scrambled up the hill and looked down. Not a bit of water in sight. But valley. And more mountain. Then we glanced behind us. Eric and Jonathan came jogging up the trail trying to catch us.

“You missed the trail head about a mile and a half back.”

“Oh.”

Shelly and I looked at each other. And then out over the valley in front of us. We had a hearty laugh at ourselves.

“It’s a beautiful view from here, though.”

“Of course,” grinned Michael-who’d-been-in-the-run-out-of-gas-van, “It’s always an adventure when I go anywhere with Naomi.”

“I’d say you’re back at the bottom of the totem pole!” Jonathan teased me.

Oh well. We retraced our steps and got back to the right trail in time to meet the wiser ones already on their way back to the vans. Hurrying past them, we ran the few hundred yards to Opal lake and scarfed down our sandwiches on it’s shore.

It was a lovely excursion. After all, what’s a three mile detour? Especially in such beautiful country side. Seriously, it was gorgeous. If anyone doesn’t believe me, feel free to come see for yourselves. I’d be more than happy to lead you up to the lake. It’s a short hike, I hear. Pretty easy. We could get there and back in an hour, honest….